


Stand Alone

by tromana



Series: 50 Starting Points [4]
Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Accidents, Challenge: Paint It Red, Drama, Episode Related, Episode s05e21 Red and Itchy, Episode s05e22 Red John's Rules, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tromana/pseuds/tromana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Lisbon broke her wrist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Paint It Red May 2013 Monthly Challenge.

Some things are impossible to escape.

Death.

Taxes.

Injuries on the job.

Well, the latter not so much for the vast majority of people, but for Teresa Lisbon that wasn't the case. A long time ago, she had lost count of the number of times she had personally been involved in shootouts, tackling suspects, and other dangerous scenarios. There was always an angry perpetrator who wanted revenge, or something that could be tripped over, or a gang member wielding a blunted instrument. Lisbon barely blinked an eye at this kind of things and in truth, she had even grown used to relatively recent trips to the Emergency Room.

Those trips had grown increasingly frequent since Patrick Jane had joined her team, however.

He was a magnet for trouble. If he hadn't pissed somebody off to the extent that he got a sharp punch on the nose, he had come up with some extraordinary stunt that led to him (or, more likely, another member of her team) receiving a minor injury of some variety or another. And then, they ended up having to receive medical treatment and thus, a visit to the hospital. Somehow, they always managed to explain away these incidents and none of her team seemed too bothered by the fact that, while the closed case record had reached stratospheric new heights, so had the number of injuries obtained by members of the unit. (Likewise had the number of attempted lawsuits and complaints lodged against the team, but that was another matter entirely.) But really, dealing with the fallout of Jane was just part of the course.

Lisbon herself had been on the receiving end of some of these accidents on occasion too. Most memorably was the time when Red John's mole, Agent Craig O'Laughlin had shot her before being killed by Agents Van Pelt and Hightower. She still hadn't quite forgiven him for that one. There were other times too, just small and insignificant things; cuts and bruises picked up while chasing down suspects, one incident of smoke inhalation and the time when she had been bitten by a dog he’d antagonized. All of these could be directly linked to her wayward consultant, and she always managed to rationalize it one way or another. So long as they got the perp in the end, she honestly didn't seem to care.

But this time, however, it hadn't been Jane's fault at all. Jane hadn't been in the vicinity of this latest incident that had left her requiring urgent medical treatment. In fact, Patrick Jane hadn't even been involved on the case at all, so she couldn't even trace this back to being one of his crazy plans or something which had happened as a direct result of said crazy plan.

She hadn't seen Jane for precisely four days and a small part of her missed him, in spite of herself. Lisbon knew exactly where Jane was. He was safely ensconced in his precious attic space, poring desperately over the Red John case. He'd made her promise not to interrupt him; he'd insisted that it was vital for him to make a breakthrough in the case, for him to be able to put together the pieces of the puzzle which he'd collected. And although she really didn't like the idea of agreeing to it – in reality, she wanted to help him - she had relented. Red John was his baby and she knew deep down that she would have ended up being far more of a hindrance than a help. So, she gave him the space and, true to her word, she hadn't interrupted him once. He was completely oblivious to her current woes and would remain as such until time was up.

But that was irrelevant; that wasn't why she had just been admitted into hospital, been rushed off for an emergency x-ray on her right wrist, been administered with a copious volume of painkillers or why she was now waiting to have her wrist set in plaster for the foreseeable future. She sighed; although a broken wrist wasn't going to stop her from doing her job for long, it was going to make things a hell of a lot more difficult. It hurt to even move the damn thing, how was she going to do paperwork, never mind pull her gun if she needed to? Lisbon knew that she would be able to find ways to work around it, but that didn't stop it from being incredibly frustrating.

What was worse was that it should never have happened in the first place. These accidents do happen, she told herself firmly as she squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, but they shouldn't have happened to her.

It had all been a perfectly easy case. They hadn’t needed Jane’s assistance to close this one. In fact, she knew that Van Pelt was busy typing up the reports while Rigsby and Cho interrogated the perp as she sat in this stark white waiting room. Lisbon was glad that it was practically closed already and that her team had had the chance to prove that they didn’t need Jane to close every single case that was passed onto the Serious Crimes Unit. It reminded her – and them – that they were competent agents who could do their job. Jane just sped up the process and made things a little bit easier, that was all.

But, even he wouldn’t have seen this one coming. She had been the one chasing down the criminal, with Cho hot on her heels. She had been the one to tackle him to the ground and while doing so, Lisbon had fallen awkwardly on her wrist. Immediately, she had felt her bones shatter and the shooting pain run through her whole arm. As she remembered hearing the crunch of her bones, she shuddered slightly. At least the painkillers she had been given had taken the edge off of it. And at least the CBI offered excellent healthcare plans for its agents, something which Jane didn’t qualify for.

Even so, it was stupid, but she still wished she had somebody keeping her company and offering her some proverbial tea and sympathy. Specifically, she wanted Jane’s company. She always ended up facing this kind of thing alone. Lisbon understood why he wasn’t there, and she reminded herself time and time again that he had extenuating circumstances. She didn’t doubt that he was working tirelessly hard to try and solve one of the most complex cases that the CBI had ever had to deal with. And she knew he’d care that she’d been injured once he found out.

Even so, it would have been nice…


End file.
